ICC10 Hard Modes: Round 47

When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.–Franklin D. Roosevelt

I label this Round 47 because it really feels like it’s been that long since I’ve been able write about our 10 man raid. Due to 10 mans occurring on our off-raid nights, you never know if something is going to perk up and pull one (or two, or three) raiders away at the last-minute.

Been waiting a long time for this could refer to The Lich King’s achievement, or what it’s like waiting to get your entire group back together and ready to tackle the rest of the hard mode encounters.

Standards

My goal starting this week was not to flip-flop hard mode and normal mode. There is some sort of psychological switch connected to the dudes in my 10 man that turns off their ability to play whenever hard mode is no longer active. Trying to flip it back on for the next boss has never worked.

So we turned on hard mode and started slow on Marrowgar (Some dumb shaman kept disconnecting), but got our game ramped up pretty quickly in time to Storm the Citadel heroic style. Our first target was the Crimson Halls, and our long-delayed date with the Blood Prince Council.

As I detailed in my last entry (sometime around the great depression), we had problems with the Council and they were many. To address these, we went in with some basic guidelines:

Cover every inch of the floor. We placed a Shadow Priest on the stage to cover that area and then one ranged DPS west, and one east. If the Priest was targeted for an Empowered Flame Orb, he could disperse if it wasn’t drained enough. Two pet classes on the orbs made handling them easy once the areas of responsibility were covered.

Disregard the Shadow Prison during Taldaram. As long as your stacks are low or gone when Taldaram is active, soaking/draning the Empowered Flames is easy.

Keep the melee clean. Glittering Sparks = 40% Slow = Lots of problems with both kinds of Vortex. Mass dispel them if necessary.

Our composition was identical to our previous failed attempts(Holy Paladins are great for a 2 tank setup). The fight ended in a brisk 4:27 and gave us our Heroic: The Crimson halls(10 Man) achievement.

When we gave Heroic Putricide a shot with some of our replacement raiders a week or two back, it was obvious from the start this would remain a two healer fight for us. Adding the additional melee (a ret paladin) allowed us a lot more room for comfort on the Volatile Ooze.

The damage output really isn’t much more than normal mode if Unbound Plague is handled correctly. Our general strategy was to arrange the ranged/healers in an arc around Putricide (tanked on the green side, permanently). We then would pass the plague left or right based on who was chosen. New plagues are passed first to any ranged dps/healer without Plague Sickness.

Where this gets sticky is when the Gas Cloud spawns. As MurphyPutricide generally does, he picked one of the melee for Unbound Plague on the second round. We were prepared to kill the Gas Cloud and transition to Phase 2, but things went slightly sideways: my healing partner was caught in no man’s land with a plague he needed to pass off quickly. However, due to the crossover plague passing with the gas cloud, nearly everyone had Plague Sickness.

There was one player left without it, but he was a good distance away. Nothing could be done and he fell to the ground just before passing of the plague for its final 10 second seconds. With no druid and no soulstone, we were left down a healer with 81% to go.

The pessimistic raid leader inside of me was thinking wipe, but I pulled out one of many optimistic raid leader responses in this situation: “Just play it out so we can see the mechanics a bit more.” The transition was handled perfectly, and we were rolling into Phase 2.

When you know you’re the only one pushing out any significant healing, you immediately lose vision of just about everything else in the fight. Malleable Goo is barely avoided, and you’re ripping off chain heals so fast you don’t even notice that the boss…is at 50%?

Everyone was performing each step of the strategy better than they have even on our first normal mode kill. Avoiding Malleable Goo and only getting one Volatile Ooze Explosion really limits the outgoing damage. Our plague strategy held, but it really wasn’t what turned the fight. The key factor was that it was a healer that died and not a DPS. Putricide is a fight of cycles. As long as you kill the oozes in time, you’re fine. Losing DPS prevents this.

Phase 3

Many said when Heroic Putricide was first attempted that the change in the 80/35% transition made the fight easier. For our raid setup, I would definitely agree. We pushed Putricide over 35% and he spawned his double oozes and ran to start drinking up potions. We cleaned up his mess and made it to the table at least 10 seconds before he would become active again.

Heroism.

He just melted. All of my chain heals were directed through the tanks with Riptides going around to keep people up as we moved around the room. At Stack #6 Putricide fell. Down 1 healer, first attempt. Another achievement gained.

There has never been a time when I’ve been more thankful for the two piece tier 10 bonus. It was literally a life saver. Keeping Riptide up on the Putricide Tank during Phase 2, and then using my hasted chain heals to heal up the melee was my strategy. Tidal Waves gave me some nice, quick Lesser Healing Waves to top up the ranged DPS.

Moral of the Story: The raid damage on Heroic Putricide is not all that high. If you’re struggling with the DPS on this encounter (keeping up with ooze spawns/transition double spawn), drop a healer and give it a shot. You might surprise yourself.

We gave Heroic Sindragosa a few pulls to see what was in store for us, but we knew that it was unlikely that we would get both her Achievement and a Heroic Mode kill in the same week. The minor changes and small strat tweaks were in place, but we just needed some more practice. Instead we decided to go for her achievement as well as the Lich King’s (noted above: Been Waiting A Long Time for This).

Both of those were completed on the first try leaving us just one Heroic Sindragosa kill short of shiny new rides.